This is such a cruel suggestion for someone who doesn’t like quick saving before every corner just in case the enemy gets a critical hit
5 Likes
it truly is a demented game
3 Likes
outlander really is an incredible mad max game. that kind of multigenre game didn’t often work out well, but somehow, it really does here
3 Likes
am playing Mario Picross right now, later series QOL stuff I take for granted is missed here. Look forward to trying super once i finish this one.
1 Like
playing the amiga version of captain blood. i love the interface and mood and love having to manually send down a little proxy to talk to anyone but i’ve restarted the game twice now and am having Problems. namely:
- when my oorx smashes into a rock a certain way, especially in the valleys, the only way i can get it out is by bashing it into the rock over and over again while edging sideways and it drives me crazy
- idk how much of it is meant to be guesswork - i read a guide and i think i was meant to offer to teleport the first alien i met apropos of nothing?? - which is unpleasant given the time limit. i guess i can appreciate the effect
- having trouble telling when an alien is saying a code or a name instaed of speaking normally. (this is obviously the point)
basically game hard. doesnt help that im not too familiar with text parser games in the first place… do any of the other versions play differently? i watched a playthru of the atari st and encounters seem to trigger way more quickly after the 1st alien
8 Likes
I’ve always appreciated Captain Blood conceptually, and I’ve even played a bit of the Atari ST version. The chance that I’ll actually sit down and “beat” the game are a million to one.
2 Likes
I keep playing Pacific Drive, slowly it’s winning me over again, but every time I look at the tech tree I see stuff that would have helped make the game a lot less terrible several in game hours ago.
5 Likes
Carpathian Night Starring Bela Lugosi (PC/Steam)
First impression is of a rather amateurish effort. No graphics or audio options, fixed sound volume way too high, menus inconsistent, controller stopped being recognized after I quit and restarted.
Has the usual modern western pixel art phenomenon of overdoing all the animation–although at least in this they don’t go in for hit flashes and gratuitous neon. There is blur and some screen shake though.
The thing that actually stopped me is that while the rest of the game and UI is razor sharp, the gameplay graphics are blurred.
Also the layout of the opening level is extremely dull, despite the animation and music trying to go really hard, and the feel of the action is kind of ho-hum.
Ah well.
4 Likes
It had been sitting on my harddrive for half a year so I finally played Sonic Overture 95 Demo. But before that I went back to “the best” Sonic Fan Game: Sonic And The Fallen Star.
I used my save and randomly played a few stages. The game is so busy visually it is hard to figure out what exactly you are doing. The animation is beautiful. Making a Sonic game is one of the hardest things you can do! Even Sega barely gets it right.
So back to Overture. The premise is this is what Sonic For The Saturn would be. Which means it has extremely Amiga graphics. Every time you kill an enemy a horrible fireworks sound effect plays. You for some reason have a combo meter. Fallen Star and this both show a love of extremely long cutscenes to convey very simple ideas. I guess Oswald the Rabbit or whatever is playing pranks on Sonic that go on for far too long. The boss was also pretty bad. Except! There is this Super Scaler thing at the very end that looks incredible and really blew our socks off even if playing it was questionable. Why is Sonic riding a Saturn planet? Still it saved the experience.
For science I then had to play Mushroom Hill Zone of Sonic and Knuckles. That game is pretty good folks. Definitely more fun and more thoughtful than the previous two.
Why stop there. Finally started Spark The Electric Jester 3. Which is Sonic Colors/Lost World to Spark2’s Sonic Adventure 2. There is a big giant overworld you select both stages and challenges and bosses from. You’re collection all kinds of shit for some purpose.
It is extremely impressive how big the environments are. It is like a big professional game that came out of a fan scene. Just like the two others it has really really long cutscenes. Or it has cutscenes that are so short and contextless you wonder why? I barely remember the story of the first two games, but in this one the internet has been shut down, travel has been closed and lines at the bank are really long. No seriously that was our hero’s Spark’s complaint, long lines at the bank. And I guess a check he had bounced. You really stretch your brain trying to find the narrative.
When the game is super fast Sonic it is pretty good. Heck when it is SA2 Knuckles stages it is good. You can really bullshit with the moveset to get where you probably shouldn’t and rescue yourself from almost death.
The momentum and fun killer are stages where you’re just suppose to destroy baddies and run around to raise your score. My friends jokes and comments falling silent as they watched me for 8 minutes lazily running around making a number go incrementally higher. Don’t want to do any of those stages again!
The long long long cutscenes are all parables that feel like they are making it up as they go along and you’ll be grasping at what exactly is the point, moral, or plot. I think they are supposed to be giving you backstory or recaps of the previous games but are so poorly told.
I’ll play more of it because when you are grinding a rail it is pretty fun and looks good. Best Sonic Game I played yesterday!
6 Likes
In between plucking away at Ys IX (at the start of chapter 5 and it both gets better than its rough first few hours and is still not as good at VIII) and slowly getting a bit of Viewfinder in (neat gimmick, through the first two areas the single optional puzzle in each are the only that have been puzzling in any real way) I decided to give the CTRL ALT EGO demo a shot since the full game is on sale and… huh. The demo is at least a couple hours long (I believe it is the prologue and first couple chapters of a full game) and I was scared initially as the prologue isn’t all that good as it stuck me in a situation where combat is likely a thing and it is very “this game was made by two people, neither of which have a good grasp on this”. I’m now through the first 90ish minutes of the game and combat hasn’t come up since.
It’s basically been a low budget/high effort immersive sim by way of a Messiah-esque possession mechanic where as soon as you can upgrade your main robot guy you can select literally any possible upgrade with some labeled “good early ones” or “for experts only” but which are generally rather different. I chose floating which with a single level up becomes full flight. At one point I was given an objective to take drain something before going to the next area but the door had a “ignore warning and proceed” option I immediately took. I could possess a summoned enemy which could destroy my bot body (or other environmental objects) and then 3d print them elsewhere. The physics at times are a bit rough, at times it has a good amount of “this is held together by string” energy but at least in the first couple chapters it seems like it is holding together well enough.
8 Likes
i cannot get the hang of red dead 2 controls at fucking all and ive been playing for like 20 hours and its driving me crazy. i was fine in red dead 1 and its like my favorite game and i want to like this one but i cant deal with the controls! the wheels going away unless i HOLD MY ANALOG STICK IN THE MENU DIRECTION, the pulling out my gun with a button that normally does other stuff, the not being able to call my horse while running is like. a crime! why would they take that away? ugh i want to like this game so baddddddddd but its one of the worst things ive ever tried to control
ive just never felt this fuckign helpless in a game i actually want to play. i just died three times in 20 minutes for basically being clumsy and then having someone shoot me. arrrgh
14 Likes
i got Bombermania im having a Bombermanic episode!! i loved Bomberman as a kid, both the games and the lil guy cuz he’s really cute and easy to draw (and so are cartoon bombs). I was intending only to play Wario Blast for nostalgias sake, but i caught the bug i guess and kept going 
Wario Blast Featuring Bomberman
This was my first Bomberman game and i had it on my OG translucent Game Brick. It’s a really weird one to start with, not just for the obvious reason (its a reskin of Bomberman GB that added Wario; Bomberman GB2 was localized as Bomberman GB. that’s all still weird because none of these games are even the first Bomberman for GB)
Unlike the normal Bomberman single player campaign you aren’t fighting bespoke enemies in stages. Instead, its a 1P version of the multiplayer – each world is a best of 3 vs 1, 2, and 3 foes in succession followed by a boss (so a minimum of 7 battles). In the JP version Bman was fighting a gang of other Bomber folk who stole his motorcycle, i guess Wario is still vs them and Bomberman is fighting Wario and his shadow clones
This gets repetitive, not helped by every boss having the same timing-based weakness (hit them during their attack) so to keep the game fresh, you get permanent power ups after each world – permanent bomb kick, a B button dash, a tackle that can stun enemies, the ability to drop a whole line of bombs at once, and finally your motorcycle which enables you to jump over indestructible blocks. The enemy nominally catches up, though they never get the bike and i only really saw them kick bombs back at me, so the game gets very easy by the end. Kind of a theme of most Bomberman games it turns out!
Wario’s addition is completely graphical (he gets unique player sprites and the art you see here) its not like the game does anything to play off his personality. This would have been right around the same time as Super Mario Land 2 and Wario’s Woods and right before Wario Land 1, they were really trying to sell the big guy. Rightfully so!! WAAAAA!!!
Pocket Bomberman
I also had this game. I actually did a stupid kid trade of this and Wario Blast for a black cart of Wario Land 2 and a shiny Pokemon card (i dont even remember what Pokemon!) In retrospect, i think i got the better value just out of WL2 alone. but don’t get me wrong this game is pretty good!!
I love the name Pocket Bomberman because 1. it’s really cute. Imagine a pocket Bomberman. I wish i had one!! 2. it completely fails to describe what is unique about this Bomberman vs the half dozen other ones for Game Boy/Color.
It’s a side scrolling platformer! Instead of wandering a series of grid mazes killing all enemies, you wander a series of puzzle platformer room killing all enemies. You can jump, plant bombs in midair, make staircases out of them all that good garbage. It immediately makes for a nice novel take on Bomberman mechanics, and actually my strongest critique might be that it never goes beyond novelty – it’s a pretty easy game that demands very simply platforming at worst. There is a Jump Mode, where you uncontrollably bounce and have to make your way up a tower, and that does something with the platform mechanics but this is a game crying out for a romhack and/or legally distinct indie clone to make something more complex out of "Bomberman + 2D platforming
Ingame illustrations show Bomberman dressed in a knight outfit and cape and its so damn cute i love when Bomberman dresses in little costumes
Bomberman GB
SPEAKING OF in Bomberman GB (2J) you play Bombermans grandpa, Indy Bomber, whose outfit is a reference to some movie character or whatever (the end credit theme even has some cute nods to said movies probably iconic soundtrack). This one reverts from the first BMGB/WB:FB’s single player to the more standard “blow up all the monsters and find the exit” structure. The power up system from the first game is maintained with the same set of powerups no less – though the motorcycle now doubles as an extra hit, which is a nice addition
Another nice addition are the stage modes: at the beginning of each world, you pick one of two sub-objectives that have to be met. So you might choose between killing all monsters, or killing them in a specific order, for the simplest example. This adds a nice bit of spice to the usual Bomberman action and encourages at least 1 full replay
That said, while i had a damn good time with this game overall it makes the insane decision to have the entire last world be a boss rush, where every boss has their FULL HEALTH and the final boss is a 3-phase challenge. The bosses in this game are generally fine, all being based around a similar gimmick of timing your bombs to hit them during a specific animation (less restrictively than the 1st game). However they all have way too much HP, and that last rush ends up being fucking grueling and exhausting as a result. By the end i was yelling at the game to STOP GIVING ME BOSSES IN A ROW like this was the fuckin Dark Souls 3 DLC
Atomic Punk
The last Game Boy Bomberman ive played so far was also the first to be released! GB2J was probably my favorite of these other than that boss rush, but Atomic Punk is imo the coolest as far as concepts go. It is in the bizarre continuity of the original Bomberman for NES, where at the end he becomes human and goes on to star in Lode Runner
There’s even a full port of the original under Game B (for Bomberman) on the start menu. I should say here whats interesting about Bomberman 1 & 2: they codify the basic “collect powerups, kill all the enemies, find the hidden exit” level structure, but unlike later games you only get ONE powerup panel per level – theres even an additional level theme that plays when you pick it up. So you accumulate power almost painfully slowly at first, but by the end of the game are permanently (assuming you dont die) moving at 4x your original speed, running thru blocks and bombs, and remote detonating the shit out of everyone. By the end of the first game you arent even harmed by your own bombs anymore and the last handful of levels are basically a victory lap, its great. (But dont play it unless youre a sicko like me who’s down for 50 levels of repetitive arcade action)
Game A (for Atomic Punk) has you playing as the Bomber Man’s son, Bomber Kid, and the basic play is identical to B-man 1 but up choose the levels from a Mega Man style buffet, and instead of finding panels you buy them from a shop menu! Each level unlocks a new panel, and you can carry up to 30 and equip up to 10. Powerups like remote bombs and wallpass are used up after the round you equipped them, but bomb+ fire+ and speed+ last until you lose a life. Its real Neat im not sure what else to say about it! Ive had this friggin post in the hopper for like a week now i gotta just post it this is why i dont do longposts lolololol
NEXT TIME: more Bomberman. I played MUCH more than this oh no
18 Likes
Gave up on Princess Peach Showtime! I think this game is kinda a piece of shit. It plays fine on non-minigame stages but there’s a lot of cases where sound design feels like it’s missing and dragging the whole thing with it
Other than the initial jingle there’s no music on the results screen’s slow, clinical number tally. I don’t feel like I’ve done anything
Nightmare sound design on this boss door going into the cat boss. Unnerving in both a functional and non-functional way. Everything just feels slightly off, like the composer was trying to be anywhere else.
OK I’m done.
Played the Penny’s Big Breakaway demo. I think it’s doing good stuff but isn’t for me. Feels like a rework of Sonic’s moveset with a de-emphasis on speed and a constrained Mario 3D World layout. You can take a lot more time playing around with movement but there’s still little speedways set up for you to roll around on. Half-pipes work really well to suggest paths through the level and the movement/momentum feels very considered.
It’s got great music but not a fan of the general look and play of the game overall. I think I just need a bit more meat than pure stage-by-stage progression atm. Looking for something a bit more A Hat in Time.
9 Likes
as a kid, i played a friend’s copy of wario blast and hated it, it was just way to repetetive for me. i did own and love pocket bomberman, though. i specifically have a really strong memory of playing jump mode in my room while cop soap the bill was playing on the tv.
4 Likes
see i found it really addictive but i was also bad at videogames & intimidated by them easily lol like getting killed by an off screen bomb blast would basically jumpscare me. So it had a level of challenge that made me overlook the repetitiveness. and i loved getting the new powerups and eventually getting the motorcycle, and having this ridiculous amount of power and mobility. Now of course im a 360 no scope l33t 33-year old gamer and its pretty easy. I think there should have been a hard mode where you fight 3, then 4, then 6 Warios, its too easy and boring compared to other games in the series where theres a bunch of silly lil guys scuttling around
shout-out 2 ragey
i 
the grouchy frogs that turn into bombs
8 Likes
Fun to realize that Wario’s bike probably comes from Wario Blast
One of the kids at school showed me the game and had to turn the gameboy off before class and was all WE ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO REMEMBER THE PASSWORD FOR THE CURRENT LEVEL : 2630. 2630. 2630.
Checking back now, it was only the password for level 2-3. I have known this password for 30 years and will remember it for the rest of my life and it’s only level 2-3?
19 Likes
Whoa I had no idea. = ooo PCE Lode Runner is on my to-play list so good to know this little piece of Hud-triv. ^ _^
4 Likes
Got tired of worrying about PS3 Demon’s Souls being stuck on my PS3 and decided I might as well try jailbreaking the thing and dumping the game.
This actually worked. = oo
EXCEPT. While the six other PS3 games I dumped, which I care less about,* ran just fine in RPCS3, Demon’s Souls just crashed while booting. = OO
Whyyy. RPCS3 says it is compatible with Demon’s Souls; the hitch–and it takes a little drilling down to find this–is that it is only compatible with the DISC version of Demon’s Souls:
:: Demon's Souls [NPUB30910] :
Digital versions of Demon’s Souls are currently NOT COMPATIBLE.
Settings don’t matter, game tries mounting itself as a disc game.
Such behavior has not been found in any other games so far.
That was in 2017. RPCS3 seems to have come to regard it as the game’s problem, not the emulator’s problem. ; )
At one point, there appears to have been a “fixer” program capable of converting the dumped PSN version to the equivalent of a dumped disc version. Not sure if that was real, but the one URL purporting to link to it no longer works.
I read something suggesting the issue might have something to do with the game having started out as a disc-only game, and only later getting a downloadable PSN version.
Was sort of surprised to find PS3 disc versions of Demon’s Souls aren’t very expensive. (Hah and Virtua Tennis 2009, the only other PS3 disc game I think I am sorta interested in, is dirt cheap. Edit: OH probably because there’s also VT4 for PS3. Well, that one isn’t too pricey either.) So I got one off eBay and I’ll just rip it from the jailbroken PS3 and that should work. Wonder if my old, PSN-version save will be compatible.
*:
- Fighting Vipers
- Joust - oops playfield slightly blurry; probably go with DC one
- Super Hang-On
- Virtua Fighter 2
- Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown
- X-Men - oh nope that blur just stands out that much more in emu
4 Likes
Finished Pokémon Picross by which I mean that I finished all of the regular puzzles. Not even going to bother with the mega picross half; from the sampler at the start, mega picross just feels wrong and unintuitive and not fun. Am I alone here in my antipathy?
4 Likes
Mega Picross is less pure and immediately intuitive but it absolutely rules. To the point that regular picross feels a little dull in comparison now. It takes a while learning every implicit rule but it’s worth giving it a chance
I wouldn’t play the same puzzles again (but that just means I only ever play mega picross and ignore regular picross in Jupiter games nowadays)
4 Likes